


Far Past Time

by transcoranic



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, mentions of other characters but not enough to warrant tagging any of them, nothing graphic though, warning for self harm and suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 00:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12399330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transcoranic/pseuds/transcoranic
Summary: it's 2:00am so here's my quick take on what would have happened if Percy made that save against the Raven Queen'shold person





	Far Past Time

Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III gritted his teeth and pushed through the Raven Queen’s magic. A million fine golden threads stretched from her hand to him, wrapping tight. They strangled him, cut off his breath, wove over his eyes and around his hands. Still, he pushed forward, reaching for that tiny scrap of paper, for damnation and redemption, for the one thing that he knew might save his friend.

The bonds of fate cut deep into his skin but Percy kept on. He had no faith in gods. He had no faith in fate. Destiny had never treated him kindly and he now had a chance to shove that cruelty back in her face. In that moment he didn’t think of consequences or reactions. In that moment he didn’t think of grief or mourning or the proper way of moving on. He was angry. He was tired. He was not going to let death take another member of his family before their time. He mustered his strength and his anger and every ounce of stubbornness in his body and invoked the contract.

***

Percy chose not to remember the next moments. Instead he marked the beginning of his now foreshortened life from the moment the Raven Queen screamed and vanished in a swirl of feathers and smoke. She left a puddle of blood where she stood, spreading over white marble and trickling down the cracked steps of the temple to mingle with the blood of the fallen. When the people of Vasselheim tried to clean up the puddle, it left a midnight black stain.

For the next weeks he refused to speak to anyone. Vex tried, before and after they got back to Whitestone. So the others, but Percy didn’t even spare them a look. He lived and slept in his workshop, and did neither well. Food was forgotten and water barely remembered. Percy’s already-thin frame became emaciated as began to cover the space in drawings and diagrams. Stacks of paper and parchment filled with scribbled sketches fed the fire as often as wood and coal. 

Vex tried. Vax tried. The rest of Vox Machina, Cassandra, the council, Gilmore and Allura and Kima. One morning, or perhaps night (Percy hadn’t seen the sun in days and the only clock in the workshop hadn’t been wound in four years) Grog and Trinket knocked down the door and tried to drag him outside. He did regret the way he had encouraged them to leave, but not much. Grog would recover and Trinket wouldn’t miss an ear in the long run. 

That day he pressed a red-hot poker against the skin of his shoulder and held it there until the skin blistered. The pain brought clarity of a sort and that day’s stack of drawings lasted a bit longer before they, too, burned.

A lifetime ago Vax had asked who the last bullet in the List had been for. A lifetime ago he hadn’t known the answer. He had had a goal, a purpose, a destiny. Now they had survived, they had won, and there were no more fights to fight. There was no use for a man who built guns in the rebuilding of cities. There was no use for a broken noble when the council of Whitestone managed so well. There was, perhaps, a use for a husband, but he couldn’t bring himself to think of touching Vex. He was broken, tainted. His soul was forfeit and he had no business bringing that anywhere near the people he loved.

The design came to him in a dream, just like the first had. Then he had been a child and unpracticed hands had milled crooked barrels and uneven pins, but now his hands moved with the force of practice, almost as if someone else was guiding them. He watched himself as he worked at the forge, as he shaped barrel and chamber and firing pin. He didn’t watch as his hands built a grip from whatever wood he found stacked in a corner. When he began to carve intricate scrolling he closed his eyes and shaped the pattern by touch and instinct.

The gun, when it was finished, held only one bullet. It was perfect in the most absolute sense of the word, like it hadn’t been built by a human being, like the conception of a gun before humans came in and muddled the whole thing up. The carvings on the grip refused to resolve in his vision, just familiar, shapes half-remembered from the forging of trammels mingled with words from demonic languages not spoken on the Prime Material Plane for eons. It sat in his hand just like the List had, a half-remembered comfort as he wrapped his fingers around it for the first and last time.

Percy took a moment to look at the clock on the wall. It was covered in dust and the hands hadn't moved in years. He had built it, a lifetime ago, hadn’t he? Maybe in another life he built clocks still and there was no gun in his hand, no weight on his soul. Maybe in another life he would not have taken a deep breath and settled his finger on the trigger. The boy who had built clocks was long dead and it was far past time that he followed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure why I even published this, it's literally just gratuitous vent fic. Hope you enjoyed it anyway :D


End file.
